


Where can you go

by Aegir



Series: Heroes aren't meant to survive [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short prequel to my story 'So much harder to love when alive'.  On the run after Project Insight, the former Asset contemplates names</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where can you go

“What’s your name?” said the waitress in in the all night diner.  He did not know why she had decided to talk to him.  He had only said a polite ‘thank you,” after she served his meal.  It was strange he had done that, but there was a stirring in the back of his head saying this was likely an ill-paid job and it was only decent to thank her. 

“Does it matter?” he said.  He did not think it mattered, did not think names ever mattered.

“Of course it matters,” she said, “there’s nothing more important than a name.”  Then a voice shouted her from behind the counter and she left him to eat his cheeseburger with extra  fries.  He knew he needed to eat a lot to maintain his strength the way he knew how to load a gun, bone deep.  Right now that meant a lot of cheap diners.  The strange thing in his mind that prompted him to thank the waitress thought the prices were outrageous, but he ignored it. 

She turned out to be right about the name.  He learned that when he tried to research himself in the mass of SHIELD and HYDRA files dumped on the internet.  It was no good trying to search on ‘Asset’, that brought up far too many unrelated things.    He knew he’d had various codenames over the years, but couldn’t remember most of them.  Anyway he didn’t think they’d often lasted beyond a mission or two.

‘James Buchanan Barnes,’ brought up only a few references to the old SSR. Also it seemed there was a grave.  Empty of course, but the SHIELD / HYDRA compound had been paying for the lie to be maintained.  That twisted something bitter and angry in him, but he pushed it back down, ignored it.    

He woke up one morning and there was another name in his head.  Winter Soldier.  It was not truly his, a weapon had no name.  But it was a name he had heard, one used around him, occasionally, by HYDRA operatives.  _So that’s the Winter Soldier.  I never thought he was real._

‘Winter Soldier’ proved enlightening, although not as helpful as he’d hoped.  The few references in SHIELD files were to rumour and unsubstantiated story.  It had been a nickname for a boogieman, which was probably why the references were so sparse.  Agents most likely ran shy of outright attributing anything to the Winter Soldier. 

The most detailed thing he found was a report by an agent called Sitwell, who had been tasked with investigating the Winter Soldier stories and determining whether there was anything in them.  There was a list of kills attributed to him, some of them felt right, even though he still had few real memories.  Some he knew were wrong.  HYDRA hadn’t had President Kennedy killed, in fact the files showed they’d been furious that the mass of sexual blackmail material they’d been about to deploy had gone to waste.  Even so, the kills he did suspect were his were hard reading enough. 

Sitwell’s conclusion had been that there was no Winter Soldier, and never had been.  The kills ascribed to him were unconnected, the idea of one man behind them all was a bit of modern myth making, nothing else.  It was reasonably argued, but he was also certain it was the conclusion of a HYDRA agent. 

In a way, though, the conclusion was right.  There never was a Winter Soldier, not the way the stories claimed there had been.  No cunning ageless figure, fading into a hidden life when his kills were concluded.  There was the Asset, a weapon in flesh, stashed in storage between missions. 

But, he thought, perhaps there could be a Winter Soldier **now**.  He had abilities well beyond a normal human, skills forced on him, a knowledge beyond memory of the way HYDRA worked.  And he had very little to lose, certainly not his life.  HYDRA needed taking down.  What they had done to a young soldier no worse than most men they would do to others, do again and again until they were stopped.  He could contribute to that, turn their own weapon against them. 

The waitress had told him names were important.  James Buchanan Barnes didn’t feel right, Bucky Barnes even less so.  They were names which belonged to a person, and he wasn’t a person.  Winter Soldier: that felt right.  He was a soldier, whatever else he was or had been.  And he was made of winter sure enough.

Winter Soldier, then.  Not that he would be signing that on motel registers, but being able to think of himself as **something** mattered.  The waitress had been right. 


End file.
